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The Albion Online is pay to win
P2W kills MMO's, so even if this game comes out strong it will be short lived.
When the objective of MMORPG's is to get max level and gather resources to accumulate the best gear (so that you can have advantages in PVP [and PVE])... Yes, I would consider anything that can be purchased with IRL currency, that provides a boost to resource gathering/leveling speed (or the purchase of items that aren't purely cosmetic) to be pay to win.
And there are many thousands of people like me (who have played MMORPG's since the term MMORPG was invented) who will not play this game for that reason; it will die, like all other pay to win or pay for advantage (which is a different name for pay to win) games.
It's called cosmetics, even wow is P2W now; you should pay for a game, then after that the only thing that you should be able to buy with real money should be cosmetics... or go free to play with cosmetic purchases (like path of exile [dunno if that game has been corrupted by P2W yet, haven't been on there in a while {but I know it's still very popular}]).
Can you buy more than pure cosmetics with actual money? The answer to that question is yes. By my understanding that is pay to win; some people will call that pay to advance... which is just a different name for the same thing, since reaching max level and gearing up is the objective (If you pay money to reach that objective quicker then how is that not pay to win?).
I come from a time where you would purchase a game, and then everyone is on an equal playing field. If you want to advance quickly, you play the game in a more efficient manor (or more often)... you don't break out the debit card.
Feel free to disagree, but a large portion of the older MMORPG community agrees with me. My logic of P2W is clear, if you can buy anything other than cosmetics the game is pay to win (you can call it pay for advantage; but in my eyes those terms are interchangeable).
Sep
The OP's questions hit the crux of the problem with Albion Online
Don't worry about specializing in anything yet, never use LP for that anyway. That will come eventually as you realize exactly what type of gear and weapon you want to use and craft.
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